


Fortunate Son

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), Hurt/Comfort, Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) Whump, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), Parental Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016), enemies to family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:00:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: Jack finds out about a son he never knew he had, and tries to repair the relationship he wasn't aware was even broken to begin with.
Relationships: Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) & Original Male Character(s), Sarah Adler/Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13





	Fortunate Son

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deltajackdalton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltajackdalton/gifts).



> Thanks to a gif of tyler hoechlin from the show "teen wolf" (which, at this time, I have never actually seen) and a discussion held with the lovely deltajackdalton, I present to the world this fic about Jack trying to repair a relationship with a son he never knew he had, with the promise of all the angst, fluff, whump and family feels that I can give! I hope you enjoy, tags will be updated as things the fic unfolds!

He doesn’t dream often, but when he does, it’s a dream he’s had for as long as he could remember.

He’s sitting in the backseat of a convertible, driving down a seemingly endless stretch of road through the crisp, rapid air underneath a golden twilit sky. The color scheme and seat pattern of the car is identified in his mental encyclopedia of classic cars as a Pontiac GTO, an older model, perhaps from the seventies--but one that is well taken care of, not a stain or scratch in sight. 

There’s a man in the driver’s seat, a woman in the passenger’s. The waning sun seems to hide too many details of their outward appearance, they talk with no distinctive voices that he can discern. Based on the limited glimpse of a profile he gets of them, he feels no recognition towards them, just complete strangers.

And yet, he  _ does  _ know them. He feels a familial bond with them, as if he had known them all his life. A sense of caring that can only come from the people who made him. A love somehow more unconditional than the one he was given from the woman who raised him. 

He opens his mouth, calls out to them using names he had never been able to call anybody before...or rather, not without meaning it. His heart beats out of his chest, praying that they hear him. listen to him,  _ engage _ with him, and don’t just pull off to the side of the road and give him up.

Like they did the minute he was born. 

To his surprise, they turn back to look at their son, but before he’s able to look at their faces, the dream ends.

And he wakes up alone.

He blindly reaches for the alarm blaring from his phone, pressing an increasingly frustrated finger on snooze repeatedly on the shattered black mirror before he brings it to his face and sees that he has three missed calls, and a text message from his once-mother, reminding him of his commitment of community service he had been sentenced to in order to pay for the multitudes of petty thefts that had finally caught up to bite him in the ass. 

And it was only because of this woman that he had gotten that opportunity, so he supposes he better listen to her for once in his life, and get to the car show. 

After all, he doesn’t want to disappoint George, who would surely be waiting for him with a cup of coffee and the neon orange wand he would hand over to him to have him direct traffic. 

George is the closest thing he has to a father, and the only reason he chose community service over prison. 

“Sometimes taking a load off in the penalty box can help clear your head, but a bright kid like you would be wasted in there, son. I think all you need is some of the same TLC you give to those cars of yours in the shop, and you n’ me are gonna be two peas in a tighter pod than the one you’d be in if your Mama didn’t bail you out.”

“She ain’t my Mama…” Tyler had revealed to him, the night he was sentenced with his community service.

“What do you mean, son?”

“I’m adopted,” Tyler chuckled humorlessly. “Found out a couple years back, after we lost…”

The flatline still haunts him to this day, chasing him in the small ways he lashes out, eternally stuck in a stage of grief, a state of rage, losing what he had always believed was his biologically related sister...only to find out she wasn’t. Never was. 

Just like he was never his mother’s son. 

The resentment had only grown stronger after her death. 

“Well, she still raised you, boy. Gotta count for somethin’.”

“Yeah. It was something alright,” Tyler scratched the back of his head, just as he scratches the back of his head now as he rummages through his closet, pushing past all the dark clothing leftover from his goth phase--that admittedly, he isn’t  _ quite  _ over--and finding something brighter, since he was tasked with directing traffic. 

He finds an orange shirt, Halloween themed, “I don’t do costumes” and throws it on as he heads out the door without a second thought. He doesn’t care that it’s the middle of July. He’s already two minutes late. 

George is forgiving, and somehow that makes him feel even more guilty. On some level he knows he would be, and he constantly takes advantage of that. He always promises this is the last time in this pastime of getting away with murder, but knows that he’s trapped in this cycle with no way out. 

A bright yellow mustang pulls up, sound blaring from the speakers so loudly that the world seems to quake from the pulsing burst of what could only  _ loosely  _ be defined as music 

Lenny, the loudmouthed mouthpiece of the shop, who Tyler had considered a rival of sorts, even stretching back to their days playing cat-and-mouse in an alternating bully-victim role, going so far back to the playground during their tenure in elementary school. 

Customer service wasn’t quite Tyler’s strong suit, but Lenny knew how to work a crowd even if in private, he’s somehow even more of a big-headed dick than Tyler.

“Havin’ fun there, Shaw? Shame you’re gonna miss the show,” Lenny smiles as he sleazily wraps a hand around his passenger, who seems to have a reluctantly tight smile plastered on her face. 

“Careful there, you’re gonna blow your speakers out.”

“Eh, that’s alright. Got a place I can go to get them fixed in a jiffy...granted, the guy who works there tends to do nothing but botch jobs.”

“Speaking of botches, how you doin’ there, sweetheart?” Tyler leans forward on the open window frame, nodding to the girl. “I dunno if this scumbag is qualified to take care of such a doll like you…”

The girl giggles, her eyes ablaze and Tyler thinks he’s got her in the bag, until Lenny ruins the moment, the only thing he’s proven useful to do.

“Cute shirt,” Lenny leans forward, separating Tyler from his date. 

Tyler nearly whips the baton out of his hands as he motions for Lenny to take his leave, which he does, but not before revving up his engine with a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“Smell ya later, Shaw,” Lenny sneers with a peace gesture from his forehead, and speeds off into the expanding lot. 

Tyler grits his teeth, his free hand curled into a tight fist as he can hear George encourage him to just “let it go,” but grudges were not so easily forgotten on the man, and anger is the only fuel to his fire. 

He directs the rest of the faceless cars, falling into the comforting monotony of such an isolating, menial task. But the encounter with Lenny isn’t filtered into the back of his mind until one final car comes screeching towards him.

_ What an idiot,  _ he thinks, as the car doesn’t seem eager to stop. He furiously waves the baton in the air with an exaggerated frustration but the car doesn’t seem to change direction, and he doesn’t react fast enough before his knees are legs are pushed beneath him--his knees momentarily popping to the opposite direction that he didn’t think was humanly possible as he’s propelled onto the car’s hood, rolling, rolling, rolling up and level then down, and down, and down and the pavement burns his arms, his cheeks as he lands behind the car, which had come to an abrupt halt after the impact. 

“The...fuck...man?” he groans, wondering if this was something Lenny had put his cronies up to. He tries to get to his feet, but he doesn’t have to; he’s lifted into the air and dragged and tossed into some sort of plush-lined container that he immediately identifies as a trunk; he’s seen enough of them in his time but never from this point of view before. 

“What the hell? Let me go!” he shouts, as if that’s going to stop anything, but before he can say or motion to do anything else, a needle is stuck into his neck, and the night gets even darker, no neon beacons or headlights in sight. 

When he wakes up from his dreamless nap, he’s no longer in the trunk, and the first thing he notices is that his shirt is gone. His skin exposed, something sticking into his gut. He tries to move his hands towards it, but they’re spread out above his head. He’s only ever been in that position once before, when he was being instructed on how to walk, tiny fingers wrapped around the hands that guided him to this moment. 

He looks up, expecting to see his mother, but just as he did back then, she’s not there. 

“Ah, looks like the child is awake from his nap,” a man--a foreign man, but he can’t identify the accent--muses, emerging from the shadows with a small box in his hand. “I hope it was a restful one…”

“Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think there’s been a mistake--” Tyler first tries to appeal to his captor.

The man doesn’t say another word, just presses the button--only for a second--on the remote, which seems to ignite an electric impulse that zaps into his stomach. It’s just a gentle shock, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. 

“You tryin’ to make me angry? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” Tyler growls as he tries to catch his breath, holding back the tickle of pain. 

“Your mouth is as big as your fathers’, I see.” 

“Father? What father, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“It doesn’t have to be this way, you know. The unfortunate son, atoning for the sins of his father.”

_ “I don’t have a father,” _ Tyler seethes through his teeth, allowing himself to catch a few breaths, but not enough to keep his voice from cracking in a soft, confused cry that he will always regret, a sign of weakness that will follow the flatline for the rest of his days. “Really, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

The man doesn’t buy it, just smiles maliciously and thumbs the button on the remote. 

“I’m sure he trained you to say that. Just tell us where he is, and we’ll let you go.”

“Where  _ who  _ is?” Tyler groans. “And nobody fuckin’  _ trained  _ me, I ain’t a dog, you asshole.”

“Just as stubborn, too. I guess we’ll have to go with plan B…”

If this is plan “A,” he most certainly doesn’t want to experience the rest of the alphabet.

“Wait--”

Another shock to his system spreads like a plague blossoming from the patch of wires poking in his gut. He lets out a blood curdling scream, echoing off of the edges of the darkened room, and as the pain fades from a roaring fire to a tingling singe, he thinks back to his dream. Back to the car, back to the idea of the father that he is literally  _ dying  _ for only to find that he was in the driver’s seat. The pleasant sunset is gone, he was left in the dark void of the night, driving headfirst into the unknown as the steering wheel began to rotate out of his control, sparks flying as he accelerates so fast that the ticker on the speedometer flies off and flicks him in the face. 

He tries to press down on the brakes, but the only thing that comes to a halt is a desperate, pulsing thought in his brain. The thought--and more than that, maybe the  _ hope _ of his father walking in through that door to rescue him. 

* * *

Jack absolutely knows better than to jinx the good times with a dash of hopeful optimism, but dare he say, this week was going rather...well, all things considered--the “things” being that of the upcoming Cairo Day, and the curse that had been laid upon it. 

But life was already bleak enough, tensions were high enough, he had been chased and beaten and bruised and angered enough to realize that sometimes, the little things in life like an actual good morning were worth more than all the bad things combined.

“Morning, Jane!” he greets Jill on his way past reception. He’s only slightly hurt that the receptionist didn’t greet him, instead dialing the phone rapidly and staring at him while she mutters something in a muted voice. 

Jill doesn’t correct him as he brushes past, and it’s his second clue that something is amiss. He swivels back, holding a finger up. 

“Jill?” he calls out, hoping that she knows he only calls her the wrong name in jest, an inside joke of sorts because “us J-named people gotta stick together, don’t we?” he had joked with her when they first met--but she’s gone from his sight before he gets the chance to touch base. 

He thinks it’s weird, but not as weird as how everyone seems to be avoiding his eyes as he heads to the destination of his urgent page.

Even Bozer and Riley, seemingly engrossed in a deep conversation that Jack doesn’t want to interrupt, don’t wave back to him, just duck their heads and scrunch their eyebrows as if Jack wasn’t supposed to be so...cheery. 

“Why’s everyone so down in the dumps today, looking at me like I got five heads?” Jack bursts into the War Room, a teasing smile lifting his cheeks before it slides off immediately, seeing a special guest among the lone duo of Matty and Mac.

“Sarah…” Jack breathes. His heart pounds, with an unidentifiable blend of emotions--but the one he can pick out is trepidation, because the last time Sarah came around, the world turned upside down, and he was just getting used to its gravity. 

Nobody else in the room seems to be surprised, but just as concerned, if not more. 

Mac, especially, seems to look at Jack with a nonverbal signal of worry that makes him look ancient. 

It’s a role reversal that gives him absolutely no comfort, and fills him with a level of dread he hasn’t had since the mission they took to the Bermuda Triangle. 

“Who’s that?” Jack nods his head to the frozen frame on the screen, a young man spread apart by chain-linked shackles, a braid of wires attached to his stomach leading off screen. 

“Tyler Shaw, a twenty year old mechanic from the suburbs of Chicago.”

Jack quickly scans the enlarged case file on the side of the screen, searching for any key words that would indicate to him some sort of connection to him, or Sarah, or Mac, or Matty. 

“Okay, so what’s so special about this kid? Got a record of theft, but outside of that, I don’t see--”

“He’s your son, Jack,” Matty interrupts, in a softer voice than the one Jack is used to hearing out of the woman. 

_ Too _ soft.

He doesn’t trust it.

He looks at Mac, and Mac’s eyes flicker to the floor, unable to offer any explanation, any answers at all. 

He looks at Sarah, and somehow knows without actually knowing, before she even says the words--

_ “Our  _ son.” 


End file.
